The present invention relates to cellular telephone communications, and more particularly to the testing of cellular telephone communications equipment. Even more particularly, the present invention relates to testing cellular telephones used in cellular telephone communications.
Testing of cellular telephones is typically carried out by coupling an RF input/output of a cellular telephone (or unit under test) to an RF input/output of a cellular telephone testing unit. A typical testing unit is a highly specialized piece of equipment and is capable of delivering a limited number of messages to the unit under test and checking for an appropriate response from the unit under test.
In order to check for the appropriate response, the testing unit checks an actual response of the unit under test against the appropriate response stored in a memory device. The memory device is typically a programmable read only memory (PROM) device.
Problematically, such testing units do not allow all possible messages to be sent to the unit under test, and therefore cannot test for the appropriate responses to all of the possible messages.
A further problem with such testing units is that they are not easily adaptable to new cellular telephone standards/protocols. For example, currently, TDMA Digital cellular telephone communication systems used in the United States are designed to comply with a standard known as the EIA/TIA/IS-54-B standard. See Electronic Industries Association/Telecommunications Industry Association Cellular System Dual-Mode Mobile Station--Base Station Compatibility Standard EIA/TIA/IS-54-B, incorporated herein by reference. When new standards are adopted, as commonly occurs in developing industries such as cellular telephone communications, the testing units must be opened, the PROM removed, and an updated PROM, which conforms to the new standard, installed; or at the least a ROM card must be removed from a slot in the testing unit and a new ROM card installed.
An additional problem with existing testing units is that such testing units are large dedicated bench-top units. Such testing units are quite expensive, and can serve only the limited purpose of cellular telephone testing.
By providing an improved apparatus and method for testing a cellular telephone and method for making the apparatus, the present invention advantageously addresses the above and other needs.